Retainer Studio · Design · Dev · Marketing · USD / CAD

Design. Dev. Marketing.
On one retainer.

Senior talent across design, engineering and marketing — on a single predictable monthly plan. Spend hours on brand, on WordPress, on SEO, or any mix that fits the month.

Design brand · product
Dev every platform
Marketing SEO · paid · content
NA hours EST / PST

Partner-verified across every major stack

Shopify Plus Partner
Webflow Expert
WordPress VIP-ready
Vercel Pro
Cloudflare Deploy
GDPR + CCPA Compliant

Trusted by operators across 8 platforms

N
Northwind Retail / Shopify
B
Boreal Wellness / WordPress
L
Lakeside Equity / Webflow
H
Hudson & Park / Shopify
M
Maple Creative / WordPress
G
Great Lakes Audio / Laravel
P
Peak Outdoor Co. / Shopify
N
Northstar Legal / WordPress
C
Cedar Analytics / Next.js
O
Ontario Dental Group / WordPress
B
Bluewater SaaS / Webflow
P
Portland Roasters / Shopify
N
Northwind Retail / Shopify
B
Boreal Wellness / WordPress
L
Lakeside Equity / Webflow
H
Hudson & Park / Shopify
M
Maple Creative / WordPress
G
Great Lakes Audio / Laravel
P
Peak Outdoor Co. / Shopify
N
Northstar Legal / WordPress
C
Cedar Analytics / Next.js
O
Ontario Dental Group / WordPress
B
Bluewater SaaS / Webflow
P
Portland Roasters / Shopify

Why a Rivet retainer

Agencies are slow.
In-house is expensive.
Freelancers disappear.

8–20K/mo
Agencies

You pay for a project manager, account handler, designer and a junior developer — for work a senior would ship in a week.

12–25K/mo
In-house

Great if you can afford senior + junior + benefits + office. Most growing businesses cannot — and do not need full-time.

Variable
Freelancers

Fast and cheap until they ghost mid-sprint, take a full-time job, or vanish on holiday with your root password.

A retainer is all three — without the downsides.
One senior specialist. Predictable monthly fee. Pause any time.

Every discipline, every platform

One specialist, every platform.

Brand, product and marketing design · Full-stack web development (WordPress · Shopify · Webflow · Laravel · Next.js) · SEO, content, paid and CRO. Hours are fungible across all of it.

BR

Brand Identity

Logos, wordmarks, visual systems and brand voice — iterated across a year, not locked at launch.

What Rivet does

  • Logo & wordmark design
  • Brand voice & messaging
  • Visual identity system
  • Templates (pitch, social, email)
  • Rebrands & refreshes
  • Art direction per campaign
DE

Product & Brand Design

Brand systems, product UI and landing-page design — shipped weekly, never a one-off. Figma-native, handoff-ready.

What Rivet does

  • Brand systems & guidelines
  • Product / UI design (Figma)
  • Landing-page design
  • Marketing collateral
  • Design tokens & handoff
  • Ongoing creative direction
MA

Growth Marketing

SEO, content, paid acquisition, lifecycle and analytics — operated continuously, not pitched as a one-time project.

What Rivet does

  • Technical SEO audits & roadmaps
  • Content strategy & writing
  • Paid acquisition (Meta, Google, LinkedIn)
  • Landing-page A/B testing
  • Lifecycle / email marketing
  • Analytics wiring & dashboards
WO

WordPress

Custom themes, Gutenberg block development, WooCommerce, performance audits, headless builds with Next.js.

What Rivet does

  • Custom block themes
  • WooCommerce & subscriptions
  • Performance / Core Web Vitals
  • Headless (Next.js) builds
  • Plugin development
SH

Shopify

Online Store 2.0 themes, Hydrogen, custom apps, checkout extensions, Liquid + metaobjects.

What Rivet does

  • OS 2.0 themes & sections
  • Hydrogen / React storefronts
  • Custom Shopify apps
  • Checkout extensions
  • Theme performance
WE

Webflow

Advanced CMS builds, custom interactions, Webflow Logic, Memberships, and migrations in or out.

What Rivet does

  • CMS-heavy sites
  • Advanced interactions
  • Logic & memberships
  • Migrations (to/from)
  • Client training & hand-off
LA

Laravel

Custom SaaS, internal tools, Filament admin panels, APIs, Stripe integrations, queue workers.

What Rivet does

  • Filament admin panels
  • Stripe / subscriptions
  • Job queues & scheduling
  • Multi-tenant SaaS
  • API development
NE

Next.js / React

App Router, server actions, i18n, authentication, headless CMS integrations, edge deployments.

What Rivet does

  • App Router + server actions
  • Headless CMS (Sanity, Contentful)
  • i18n + localisation
  • Auth (NextAuth, Clerk)
  • Vercel / edge deployments
AS

Astro / Static

Content-driven sites with island architecture, MDX, perfect Lighthouse scores, lean hosting.

What Rivet does

  • Content sites
  • MDX + components
  • Perfect Lighthouse
  • Lean hosting
  • Migrations from WP / Gatsby
CU

Custom Stacks

Inherited a mess? Rivet maintains and untangles legacy PHP, Node, Ruby, Django and framework-less codebases.

What Rivet does

  • Legacy PHP / Node
  • Ruby on Rails
  • Django / Flask
  • Framework-less codebases
  • Full rewrites
OP

DevOps & Hosting

CloudPanel, AWS, Vercel, Fly, Hetzner, Docker, CI/CD, backups, monitoring and incident response.

What Rivet does

  • CI/CD pipelines
  • Docker & Compose
  • CloudPanel / Forge / Vercel
  • Uptime & monitoring
  • Incident response

By the numbers

11
years shipping for NA clients
120+
production sites delivered
8
platforms mastered
14K
client hours saved

What clients say

" Operators on working with Rivet "

★★★★★

"Rivet fixed things our last three agencies couldn't touch. The retainer model means I can text Rivet about a bug and know it's handled — I don't think about my site anymore."

S
Sarah K.
Founder, Northwind Retail
★★★★★

"We replaced our $9K/mo agency with the Scale plan and got faster delivery, better communication, and senior work end-to-end."

M
Marcus T.
Boreal Wellness
★★★★★

"He ported our entire Webflow site + built custom Logic flows in three weeks. The previous agency had a six-week estimate and hadn't started."

P
Priya L.
Lakeside Equity
★★★★★

"Built our MVP in Laravel, shipped in five months, and stayed on retainer through year one. Without him we'd have raised a seed round for less."

D
David R.
Great Lakes Audio
★★★★★

"The Hydrogen build is the fastest Shopify storefront we have. Rivet treated our brand guidelines with respect — rare for a developer."

A
Anna B.
Peak Outdoor Co.
★★★★★

"Four Magento stores moved to Shopify Plus without a single support ticket from customers. Literally invisible migration."

T
Tom H.
Hudson & Park
★★★★★

"The retainer pays for itself in the first SLA incident. I don't pay hourly for panic calls anymore."

L
Linda M.
Ontario Dental Group

Deep dives

Three featured wins.
Before, after, receipts.

Shopify DTC apparel 3 weeks

From 2.1s LCP to 0.7s — and +24% conversion

Rebuilt theme with custom sections, lazy-loaded hero video, deferred non-critical JS.

Northwind Retail

Conversion rate

2.1%
2.6%
WordPress Supplements 6 weeks

WooCommerce subscriptions without the bloat

Replaced 14 plugins with a custom block theme + Woo Subscriptions. 60% faster admin.

Boreal Wellness

Admin TTFB

1.8s
0.7s
Webflow Fintech 4 weeks

A Webflow site that actually converts

Migrated from Squarespace. Rebuilt lead capture with Memberships + Logic + Salesforce sync.

Lakeside Equity

Qualified leads / mo

12
58

Estimator

How many hours per month?

Drag the slider. Rivet will recommend the tier that fits.

Recommended
5 h80 h
Monthly price
$
or $ CAD
Hours included
Response SLA
Start
WordPress Shopify Webflow Laravel Next.js Custom WordPress Shopify Webflow Laravel Next.js Custom

Flat monthly pricing

Pick the right tier.

Scale up, pause, or cancel any time. Same quality bar on every plan — only hours and response times change.

Starter

Small sites that need a reliable pair of hands — design, dev or marketing, any mix.

$1,800 / month
or $2,480 CAD
Hours10 hours / month
ResponseNext business day
  • 10 hours / month · fungible across design, dev, marketing
  • Rollover 1 month
  • Uptime monitoring + weekly backups
  • Monthly performance + SEO report
  • Email support
  • Plugin + platform patching
Book a call
Most popular
Growth

Most popular — for teams shipping across design, dev and marketing weekly.

$3,600 / month
or $4,960 CAD
Hours25 hours / month
Response24h standard · 4h critical
  • 25 hours / month · fungible across design, dev, marketing
  • Everything in Starter
  • Slack / Linear / Notion integration
  • Weekly async standup (Loom + notes)
  • Quarterly audit (SEO · Perf · Design · Brand)
  • Feature dev, A/B tests, creative campaigns
  • Priority ticket queue
Start Growth
Scale

Embedded studio for complex programs across design, dev and marketing.

$7,200 / month
or $9,920 CAD
Hours60 hours / month
Response4h critical · 12h standard
  • 60 hours / month · fungible across design, dev, marketing
  • Everything in Growth
  • Direct phone / SMS channel
  • Dedicated Slack channel
  • Monthly strategy call (brand + growth + stack)
  • Multi-site / multi-brand
  • Embedded art direction
Talk to Rivet

Honest comparison

Retainer, or the alternatives

Retainer (Rivet)
In-house hire Traditional agency Random freelancer
Monthly cost $1,800 – $7,200 $9,000 – $15,000 $8,000 – $20,000 $2,000 – $10,000 (variable)
Time to first ticket closed Same day Ramp-up 1–2 weeks Depends on mood
Senior level work Always Depends on hire Junior does 80% Sometimes
Cross-platform expertise WP · Shopify · Webflow · Laravel · Next.js 1–2 stacks Depends on agency Usually one stack
Response SLA 4h critical on Growth+ Business hours 1–3 business days No SLA
Paused / cancelled any time Yes, monthly Severance 3–12 mo contract Yes
Knowledge of your stack retained Yes, I stay Yes Team rotates Until they leave

Every plan includes

What's in the box.

No tiered "premium" features — reliability, performance, security, growth and ops tooling are the baseline. Here's every thing you get from day one.

RE
Reliability
  • 24/7 uptime monitoring
    External Pingdom-style checks every 60s. Rivet gets paged, not you.
  • Off-site weekly backups
    Retained 30 days. Stored encrypted on a second provider.
  • Plugin & core updates
    Tested on a staging site before production. Every week.
PE
Performance
  • Monthly Core Web Vitals audit
    CrUX real-user data + lab tests. Report + action list each month.
  • Image & script optimisation
    WebP/AVIF, lazy-loading, deferred scripts, critical CSS inlining.
SE
Security
  • Security patching
    CVE monitoring on your plugins + platform. Patched within SLA.
  • Malware scanning
    Daily filesystem integrity scan + reporting.
GR
Growth
  • SEO health check
    Schema, meta, indexing issues. Monthly review.
  • A/B test support
    GrowthBook / Optimize experiments wired into the site.
OP
Ops
  • Slack / Linear / Jira
    Pick your channel. Rivet works where you work.
  • Async weekly standup
    Loom video + written recap. No meetings unless you want them.
DE
Design
  • Landing-page iterations
    Weekly design improvements on the pages that convert — no "design phase" boundary.
  • Figma component library
    A maintained component system your team and Rivet work from.
MA
Marketing
  • SEO crawl audit
    Monthly technical SEO audit — redirects, schema, indexing issues, LCP.
  • Analytics dashboard
    Plausible, GA4 or Mixpanel wired and curated into one operator view.
  • A/B test pipeline
    GrowthBook / Optimize experiments wired into production.

Beyond the retainer

One-off engagements.

from $6,500

Platform migration

Squarespace → Webflow, Magento → Shopify, WP → Headless. Fixed-scope.

from $14,000

Full site rebuild

New design, new platform, same domain. Six-week average.

from $18,000

Shopify Hydrogen build

Headless storefront with Sanity or Contentful as CMS.

from $24,000

Laravel MVP sprint

Custom app, Stripe, Filament admin, in six weeks.

from $3,500

Performance overhaul

Guaranteed <1.5s LCP or Rivet keeps working until it is.

from $2,400

SEO technical audit

50-point audit + prioritised fix list + schema implementation.

from $8,500

Brand refresh

Refreshed identity: logo, wordmark, palette, tokens, templates.

from $12,000

Design system build

Figma design system with dev-ready tokens and a Storybook.

from $9,500

SEO technical + content overhaul

60-day sprint: schema, site architecture, 10 cornerstone pages.

from $6,500

Paid acquisition pilot

Meta + Google setup, creative, first 60 days of optimisation.

From zero to shipping

The first 30 days, documented.

  1. 01
    Day 0

    Kickoff call & access

    45-minute call, shared folder for credentials, stack inventory, goal-setting.

  2. 02
    Day 1–3

    Audit & triage

    Full read of your site — performance, security, SEO. Triaged list of quick wins.

  3. 03
    Day 4–7

    First ticket closed

    Fastest win from the triage, shipped to production by end of week 1.

  4. 04
    Day 8–14

    Monitoring & backups live

    Uptime, backups, security patching, Slack wired in. You can sleep now.

  5. 05
    Day 15–30

    First monthly report

    30 days in: what was fixed, what's next, hours used, hours rolling over.

Response times

SLA by tier.

Every ticket gets a named owner and a response-by time, tracked in a shared view. If Rivet misses it, your next month is free — that has never happened, but the promise stands.

Plan Critical Standard Next-day Notes
Starter Next business day 48 hours Email-based support.
Growth 4 hours 24 hours 48 hours Slack-based support + priority queue.
Scale 4 hours 12 hours 24 hours Direct phone / SMS channel. Dedicated Slack.

Security & compliance

Keep your site — safe.

Encrypted, off-site backups

Weekly full + daily incrementals. 30-day retention on a separate provider from your host.

CVE monitoring per dependency

Every plugin, package, gem and container image you run is monitored for published CVEs.

Least-privilege access

You own every credential — Rivet uses scoped, revocable access. SSO where possible.

Incident response playbook

Pre-written runbooks for site compromise, data loss and DNS outage. Tested quarterly.

GDPR & CCPA ready practices

Consent banners, data-export endpoints, retention schedules. Rivet can sign a DPA.

Staging before production

Every change tested on a ring-fenced staging URL before it touches production.

What Rivet knows

Tech stack, no bluffing.

Design

Design

Brand, product and marketing design — Figma-native with proper tokens, ready for engineering.

Figma + FigJam Design tokens Storybook Lottie / Rive Framer Spline / 3D
Growth

Marketing

SEO, content, paid, lifecycle and analytics — run as a continuous operation.

Ahrefs / Semrush GA4 + Plausible + Mixpanel Meta + Google Ads Klaviyo / Customer.io GrowthBook Hotjar / FullStory
CMS

WordPress

Block themes, Woo, headless, plugin dev.

Gutenberg block dev WooCommerce + Subscriptions ACF / Meta Box WP-CLI & migrations Headless (Faust / Next.js)
E-commerce

Shopify

OS 2.0, Hydrogen, apps, Liquid.

OS 2.0 themes Liquid + metaobjects Hydrogen / Oxygen Custom apps (Node, Remix) Checkout extensions
CMS

Webflow

CMS, Logic, Memberships, interactions.

Advanced CMS Custom interactions Logic flows Memberships Migrations
Backend

Laravel

Custom SaaS, Filament, APIs, queues.

Filament 3 admin Livewire + Alpine Stripe / subscriptions Job queues Multi-tenant
Frontend

Next.js

App Router, RSC, server actions.

App Router Server actions Headless CMS NextAuth / Clerk Edge runtime
Static

Astro

Content sites, island architecture.

MDX Islands Content collections Image optimisation Perfect Lighthouse
Ops

DevOps

Hosting, CI/CD, monitoring, backups.

CloudPanel, Forge, Vercel Docker + Compose GitHub Actions Hetzner, AWS, Fly Uptime + incident response

Frequently asked

Answers, straight.

How is this different from an agency?
You get one senior specialist — a Rivet engineer — instead of a junior account handler, a project manager, a designer and a developer. Less friction, same or better output, typically at one-third the cost.
Do you work in North American time zones?
Yes. Rivet overlaps 9am–3pm ET / 6am–12pm PT every weekday. For Scale clients, coverage extends further. Critical response SLA applies 24/7.
Can we pause or cancel?
Yes, any time, for any reason, with no cancellation fee. All retainers are month-to-month.
What if we need fewer or more hours?
Hours roll over one month on Starter / Growth, two months on Scale. If you consistently need more, we upgrade; less, we downgrade. No drama.
Who owns the code?
Always and fully. You own every line written for you, every credential, every account. Rivet uses revocable, scoped access.
What platforms do you NOT work with?
Drupal (legacy only), Wix (cannot do advanced work there), SharePoint, Joomla. Everything else — yes.
Can you sign an NDA / DPA?
Yes — Rivet can sign either or both before any access is granted.
Do you charge sales tax?
Invoices are USD (or CAD on request) from Rivet's EU-based entity, so US and Canadian clients are generally exempt. Rivet will advise on your specific jurisdiction during onboarding.
How quickly can we start?
Kickoff call within 48 hours of a signed agreement. First ticket closed usually inside 7 days.
What happens if you're unavailable (holiday, illness)?
Rivet gives 3 weeks notice for planned time off, during which the backlog is either completed in advance or handled by a vetted backup specialist. For unplanned outages, emergency partners pre-briefed on each client retainer cover incidents until primary coverage resumes.
What disciplines does a Rivet retainer cover?
Senior design (brand, product, marketing), development (WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Laravel, Next.js and custom), and growth marketing (SEO, content, paid, CRO, email, analytics). Hours are fungible across all of it.
Can we spend all hours on marketing one month and design the next?
Yes. Hours are fungible. The only rule is hours don't double-book — one deliverable at a time, but the mix per month is yours.
Do you do brand work or just logos?
Full brand systems: logo, wordmark, palette, typography, voice, templates, tokens, and ongoing art direction. Not one-off logos.
rıvet EST. 2026
US / Canada EST / PST hours

Who is behind this

Behind Rivet.

A senior-specialist retainer team. 11 years shipping for US, Canadian and European operators. Remote-first, working North America hours.

Rivet was founded to give growing businesses the one thing they actually need: a senior team they can reach before something breaks, not after. Every site shipped is personally code-reviewed, tested, and deployed. No juniors, no handoffs, no agency layers.

Guides & playbooks

Resources for operators.

Featured · Apr 16, 2026

WordPress headless: when to bother, when not to

Headless WP is not a silver bullet. A decision framework from 20+ builds.

Apr 12, 2026

The Core Web Vitals Shopify playbook (tested on 12 stores)

The exact checklist I run on every Shopify theme to get under 1.5s LCP.

Apr 5, 2026

Retainer vs agency: the real cost math for 2026

Hidden costs, churn, junior developers — the honest comparison founders never get.

Let's talk

Your next retainer partner is one form away.

Tell us about your site. We'll send back an honest audit and a plan recommendation within one business day.